


I Still Text Him

by redandgold



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, slight violence in chapter 7
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 22:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4280100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Becks lives in LA. I live near Bolton. It's a long way," he smiles. "I still text him." // 100 prompts featuring Beville (mostly angst). 076 Fixed - 'it's not the years, honey, it's the mileage.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You can find the 100 prompts I'm basing this all off on [here.](http://bedeville.livejournal.com/737.html)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **037\. S O U N D**
> 
> _Six String Heart String.  
>  Gary plays songs for David. It's all he knows how to do._
> 
> * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was prompted by Gaz playing the guitar at Hotel Football over the weekend (please tell me people saw that?? IT WAS ADORABLE).

 

I can’t remember how I first started playing the guitar, just that it was there and I decided to pick it up. Might have been because of an Oasis song, and after all you’re my wonderwall, and that’s the first song I play to you for you. The strings are metal and painful under my fingertips, and they cut deep not like when you pick up a ball for a throw-in. But give it time, I think to myself, looking at you not the guitar.

You always come over to my room when you’ve got nothing to do, to the point it’s almost like a reflex, kind of like when your life’s empty you fill it again, at least that’s how I want to think. And you’ll sit at the foot of the bed just watching the telly while I sit on the bed and pluck at the strings. (You pluck at mine, do you know? – no, I suppose not.) If you can hear me playing badly you make no note of it, for which I’m kind of grateful, to be honest. It helps you don’t listen when I tell you I love you, makes it all the easier.

Over lunch one day I ask you what sort of music you like, can’t believe I haven’t asked this before. You say sort of rock songs. Sort of Queen, U2, soft rock but not really proper metal and all that. Sort of like Oasis? I ask. Yeah, sort of like that. Funny, I say. I like that too.

I go home and look up sort of rock songs and pick them all out carefully, because I don’t want you to listen, but I want you to know.

It’s when I’ve done the first bass notes of With or Without You (life’s little ironies are like that, I suppose) that you look up, tilting your head back but not really taking your eyes off the telly just yet. You know what’s the funny thing about music? You ask, stretching your feet out like a cat making itself comfortable. It’s got both the letters u and i in it.

Huh, I say, my fingers strumming you’ve got me with nothing to win and nothing left to lose. So it does.

You say, you shouldn’t just play and not sing. And I know you know I can’t sing for shit, I sound like a right crocked monkey, and I say fuck you but I also say I can’t live with or without you. There you go, you say, smiling and leaning back so your head rests near where I’ve stuck my feet out. There’s your music.

So I sing to you for you because I could never say what I meant to say and this is the only way I know how. And maybe you’re listening or you’re not, and maybe you know or you don’t, but sometimes you say I like this song (I don’t say I know you do) and you smile and you make me smile too. You’re very good at this string pulling thing, damn you.

On your last night with us with me you come to my room and you’re quiet and you don’t turn the TV on. Instead you say why don’t you play that song you first played, not the U2 one, the Oasis one. I put my calloused fingers across four strings and press hard. (Not you too.) Today is gonna be the day. And maybe you’re gonna be the one that saves me. After all. You’re my wonderwall.

I’ve sold the guitar, I couldn’t sing for shit anyhow, because when you’re playing to an empty room there’s not much that fills it. And a guitar isn’t like music, see, because it doesn’t have an i string, and it doesn’t have a you.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **025\. S T R A N G E R S**
> 
> _Gary makes a deal with the devil - Becks's life for his, although it's not as simple as dying._
> 
> * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on an AU harlequindreaming prompted once - what if you could save someone you loved from dying but in return he wouldn't be able to remember you or your relationship. It ends on kind of a happy note? but it's also sad. HAHA. It's Beville, what did you expect?

**1\. How To Make A Deal With The Devil**

Listen carefully. Look close. This is what the headlines of newspapers all over the world are going to read tomorrow: David Beckham, 27, Dies In Car Accident. I can play the scene out for you, if you’d like. You could be the passenger, if you’d like. He’s going to take one of his fast cars and bring it round for a spin at two in the morning, because he’s Beckham and he does that. And usually you wouldn’t worry, would you? Because he’s a ridiculously safe driver anyhow.

Look over there. See that other hulking mass looming dark in the shadows? That’s the other sort of person who’s out at two in the morning. You can lean close and smell his breath, go on. Stinks of all sorts, doesn’t it? He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He ploughs into your precious David’s car from the wrong side. Listen to the crunching; there’s no way anyone could survive that. If you want to be in the car, you’ll get out with minor bruising. But your best friend – or more – he’s going to be pronounced dead at the scene.

_Why are you telling me this?_

Because I can offer you a chance to stop it.

_How?_

Not why, not what’s the catch, not what will I have to give up, but how. Our questions reveal much about us, Mr. Neville.

_Tell me how._

I’ll make you a deal. Tomorrow the papers will print something about the London Congestion Charge scheme instead. David will decide to stay in for the night. The drunk man might hit a tree, but he’ll live too. But David won’t know you’ve done this for him. In fact, he won’t remember you at all. He’ll know you're Gary Neville, but he won’t _know_ who you are, what the two of you have had for the past twelve years – or more. Anything you tell him he’ll forget within five minutes. Everyone who knew about you two will forget. You’ll just be another teammate. And not even teammate, at the end of the year.

_But he lives._

Yes, he’ll live. He’ll have a long and happy life with his wife and children and new clubs and sponsorship deals and so on and so forth. He’ll smile every day. Without you.

_Where do I sign?_

**2\. A Memory**

The cinema is dark all around them. Gary shifts in his seat uncomfortably, his fingers twitching with the nervous fervour of someone who left the stove on. “I’ve got to go practice,” he hisses through gritted teeth at the boy beside him, who smiles with a maddening indulgence and turns back to the screen.

It was David’s idea, of course, to go to the movies when there were far more important things to be done. He doesn’t need to practice, thinks Gary vengefully as he turns away to stare at the exit sign. He’s already got his perfect free kicks down and perfect hair and perfect –

“Hey,” David says, his (perfect) voice low and quiet and trembling for some reason Gary can’t place.

“I’m trying to watch a movie, Becks,” Gary says, his tone dripping with because- _someone_ -wanted-to.

“I’m glad you came,” David says, and suddenly Gary is aware of a very real and very warm hand covering his. A jolt of electricity shoots up his spine and he almost has to bite his tongue to stop himself from saying I wouldn’t have come for anyone else. Although he doesn’t have to say it, because David already knows.

He can’t even remember what the sodding movie was. All he remembers is the touch of David’s skin, and the way David’s eyes burned when he said, “please never forget me”, and the way his own voice caught in his throat as he whispered, “never”.

 

**3\. The Morning After**

Gary keeps telling himself that last night was a dream, that he didn’t make some stupid bargain to save David’s life because David’s life doesn’t need saving anyhow, that he never would have died in the first place. That he hasn’t died. But his fingers are shaking as he reaches for the door to the changing room.

The familiar blond mop is fiddling around with the number 7 shirt and Gary breathes a sigh of relief that he immediately catches and hides. “Becks!” he exclaims, and crosses the room to envelope him in the familiar hug, his nose catching the hint of cologne (he’s always told David it’s a football pitch, not a bloody dinner event, and David never listens).

David struggles. It’s not a rude sort of struggling, but an embarrassed, gentle pushing off and Gary lets go and stares at him wide-eyed.

“Oh. Hey, Neville. What’d you do last night, have too much tequila?” David laughs uncomfortably and then turns away, looking for his shoes (under the bench in the first corner to the left, Gary knows, he always puts them there for luck).

“Becks,” he says, rolling out the familiar name and realising that it’s taken on a sharp, almost bitter taste. “Don’t you remember?”

David looks straight at him, straight through him. All of a sudden Gary’s not sure what would have been more painful, seeing him in the car crash or seeing the blank, cold unrecognition in his eyes. “Remember what?” he says, and it’s obvious there’s no more burning.

Gary swallows what he was going to say (us) and says instead, “your shoes are over there.”

 

**4\. A Familial Consultation**

The Neville brothers are no strangers to odd requests from each other (once Phil had asked Gary to find him a rabbit and three goldfish, no explanations given) so when Gary asks Phil to stay back after training, Phil obediently follows him out to the stadium. There’s no one in Old Trafford this time of day, and they sit in the Stretford End looking at the green grass (of home).

“What’s it like?” Gary says finally. “Becks and me.”

Phil raises an eyebrow and turns to look at him. “What d’you mean what’s it like? There’s nowt much to talk about, is there.”

It feels like the sentence has transformed itself into a thousand million spears that punch themselves into Gary, and he reels back in his seat like Muhammad Ali landed a blow. Phil stares at him with concern.

“You don’t talk,” the younger Neville continues, as if explanation represented cure. “It’s not like he’s got much time for anyone, really, international superstar and all.”

Gary wants to say, he always made time for me, but he keeps quiet.

“In fact this is the first time I’ve heard you call him Becks.” Phil shrugs. “It’s not like he’s a bad sort, just was never one of the gang, that’s all.”

Gary has never hated someone, not even a Scouser, as much as he has hated that nameless drunk man who he hopes is in a hospital somewhere. Or better yet, dead.

“Hypothetically. Hear me out a sec, Philip. Hypothetically, if you’re really great friends – best friends – with someone, and they forget you, and everyone forgets.” Gary looks at Phil almost like a silent cry for help, almost because he would never truly ask for it. “What would you do?”

Phil’s mouth is dry. He wonders if he should take Gary to the doctor, and yet there’s something about his entire being that’s deflated, as if a reason to exist has been robbed from him. A facet taken away.

“I don’t know,” he hears himself saying. “I don’t know what I would do.”

“Funny that,” says Gary, and he leans back and closes his eyes and exhales, and Phil is seized by a sudden tenderness and sadness, looking at the worn lines on his brother’s face. “Neither do I.”

**5\. When Telling People Things, Try Not To Cry**

Gary remembers distinctly the voice telling him that anything he says to David, David will forget. It is this thought and nothing else that sends him to find David one day sitting alone in a corner of a bar. David is surprised to see him here and leans back almost in recoil when Gary sits opposite him.

“How did you know I was here?” he asks.

There are many answers to the question, like when we were nineteen and this bar had just opened I brought you here to show you I could be adventurous too, and you had to carry me home. Or when we were twenty two you were drunk and gave me a kiss and maybe I kissed you back and maybe I'll always remember this place for that. Instead he says, “you always sit here. I showed you.”

David blinks in disbelief and suspicion. It’s another thousand million spears, but Gary soldiers on, as he always has and must do again now.

“Listen, Becks. Just don’t say anything for the next five minutes. I need to tell you a story. And you’ll have forgotten this all by the time the five minutes is over, but I just need to tell you.”

He can see David gripping the glass with one hand, the other pushing slightly off the edge of the seat, almost as if he’s going to leave (has learnt to read these signals over the years that no longer exist). He lifts a hand, a very real and very warm hand to cover David’s, and feels the blonde stiffen under the alien touch.

“You and I. We’ve been best friends since we were what, twelve. We played together every single day, trained, how do you think I’ve gotten so good at the overlapping gimmick? We just – clicked, our brains, melded, you knew exactly what I was going to do and I knew exactly what you were going to do. There’s no way to describe that feeling. Maybe it was love. You asked me out to the movies, remember? And held my hand, and told me never to forget you.”

He breathes. David doesn’t.

“I could never forget you. Last week you were supposed to be in a car accident and you were supposed to have died. But someone offered me a chance to save you, and I took it. They told me that if you lived you would forget everything we’d ever had. I would remember, but I would be the only one. I promised I’d never forget, didn’t I. I never go back on promises. So now I’m the only one who remembers movie night, and the way you’d pick at your jelly beans, never eating the green ones. I remember when we went to the karaoke and you sang that awful version of Angels. I remember what your arms felt like, what running my hand through your hair absently as we did the crosswords felt like.”

He’s vaguely aware of the tears that seem to have escaped from the corner of his eyes, hot and sticky and inappropriate. Boys don’t cry.

“You won’t remember any of this, but you must understand, Becks. I would do anything to save you. Even if it means giving up everything I’ve ever had. Please understand."

He chokes on a sob, stuffs it back into his throat.

"I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He doesn’t know who he’s talking to, whether he’s sorry for David, or sorry for himself, or the both of them. David has said nothing. Gary sits up straight, pulls his hand away, wipes his eyes dry and leaves. A few seconds later David shakes his head like he’s had a bad dream and stares at the beer he is holding, like trying to reach something so far away.

 

**6\. Another Memory**

“I can’t believe you actually brought them,” David laughs in delight as he ushers Gary in from the cold that is the doorstep. Gary storms in and dumps a box of heavy albums before taking off his scarf; his ears are almost blue and David playfully reaches out a hand to rub them red.

“You have to see the one where Phil’s wearing one of Tracey’s dresses,” Gary sniggers, flopping onto the sofa and stretching out an arm in invitation, which David duly accepts. They flip to the offending page and giggle like overexcited schoolgirls at the sight of little Phil struggling to get himself into a frilly, checked outfit.

There are snapshots of the three of them having a tea party, of Gary’s first bear, of Phil’s first birthday party. Soon enough they end up at the football and Gary’s running after the ball in a shirt twice as big as he is and shorts that look liable to drop down at any moment. David enjoys Gary’s embarrassment very much. He flips the page and sees himself; he must’ve been what, fourteen or fifteen then, a huge smile on his face, the United crest over his heart. He looks at Gary, whose cheeks are red.

“Stalker,” he teases.

“It’s the first photograph I ever took,” Gary mumbles. It’s the first time I fell in love, he doesn’t say. But David already knows (always does). He finds Gary’s hand and squeezes it tight and promises himself he’ll never let it go.

**7\. A Callback, Like An Audition**

Memories don’t really die, you see. Unlike people. As long as you’re still around, as long as you’re still alive, you’ll remember, won’t you? Everything, little or big. You’ll know that once upon a time it did happen. Maybe now it’s all in your head, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

_And he’s alive._

Yes, he is. That’s the reason you live, isn’t it? Because he lives, too.

 

**8\. How To Come To Terms**

Gary doesn’t hear from the voice ever again. In the summer David moves to Madrid without a spare glance for anyone in the team. Gary doesn’t say goodbye, just makes sure that he’s out on the pitch training when David’s flight is taking off from Manchester airport. His goodbyes had been said the night before the non-crash.

But it’s okay, he reasons, sitting in the changing room all alone. It’s too early in the morning and most of them are still asleep, leaving him to the quiet comfort of his memories. It’s okay because once he had David, once they had each other. Even if no one remembered, he would. He _could_.

And it means seeing David’s face on a giant billboard for some clothing advertisement. It means seeing him always smiling as he makes it big in Spain, in the US, and wherever else he’ll go, rather than seeing an old picture in the obituaries section. It means David being able to breathe, and Gary being able to watch him breathe, no matter how far away. Just to watch him live. That’s enough.

He steps outside and tilts his head back to look at the sky. There’s nary a cloud in the sea of blue, and if he listens hard enough, he can hear the birds singing, their long keening calls indistinguishable between infinite sorrow and unfettered joy.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **003\. E N D S**
> 
> _Or: five cities in which Gary Neville said goodbye._
> 
> * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basic beville angst although it's surprisingly not as angsty as I thought it would be - there's only one chapter (Madrid, ofc) that you can say is properly sad. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWsEuczNj48) is the video for Becks's red card against Argentina in 1998 if you haven't seen it before; I never realised that Gaz actually is the one who goes up to him and hugs him. Also Gaz really does say, before his testimonial, “I couldn’t ask for more than to have all my friends back for one last time.”

_I. London_

London’s all grey and smokey, painted in strips of dark blue and silky arsenal maroon that you stare at sourly as the bus goes by. You want the bus to take you back to the searing landscape of Manchester anytime, the buildings going down and up and changing, growing alongside you as you kick your footballs at the Cliff. You don’t even know why you’ve had to come down, some sodding – you’re not old enough to swear yet, you’ve been told, but you push the word between your teeth in a whisper – exhibition match or something like that.

(Later you’ll tell David that you loved London the minute you saw it, and David will laugh and say why would you? It’s a horrid place, and you will say yeah, but it had you, didn’t it.)

“Right, boys,” Coach Harrison says from in front of the bus, waving his hand in the air and hushing all the boys till they’re quieter than mice. “I want names.” That’s all he says, and he’s never been a man for much words, but you all know what you’re supposed to do. You hop off the bus full of a burning desire to pound these cockneys into a pulp.

Which you do, with savage delight, and the score would’ve been even more tilted, but for the fact that there’s this golden-haired boy who keeps nipping past down your left, his right, gliding past the red shirts with almost consummate ease, like a ghost no one can catch. There’s something in the way he pushes the ball with the edge of his shoe, like he’s done this a million times before, spent a million lonely nights just practicing and practicing. Watching from the other end of the pitch, you can’t help but smile. You know the feeling, have put in your million times, too.

The boy scores a beautiful free kick, arcing through the sky, like a rocket clean as a whistle surging into the corner. (You will watch David take some more free kicks, much more impressive than against a bunch of eleven-and-twelve year olds, important games against important clubs. But you will always remember this one.) Once the game is over you cross over to the boy and ask for his name.

“Becks,” says the boy, grinning a wide, toothy grin, his golden fringe flopping dangerously towards his eyes. “Call me Becks.”

“Becks,” you repeat, noting it down for the future. The lads are getting back on the bus, London is about to be left again to the blue and white, and you raise a half-hand in farewell. “Bye, Becks,” you call as you climb aboard, wondering if you’ll ever see the boy again. Wondering if the boy heard you.

(Later, when you ask David, David will smile and say of course.)

Becks isn’t even a real name, you think as you write it down and put the slip of paper in Coach Harrison’s hand. But you keep saying it, mouthing the word over and over again, as if it fits perfectly on the tip of your tongue, like a warm hug of an old friend.

 

_ii. Saint-Étienne_

You can do nothing but watch: his leg reach up in slow motion, the boot connecting with the flesh. Any other game, any other person you would be the first to surround the referee, shouting at him “ref, ref he didn’t mean it, ref you’re nuts if you think that’s a red card offense”. That’s what defenders do, defend their players, and you couldn’t keep your mouth shut if they glued it.  But other white shirts move for you; you move for him, to him, picking him up from the ground and holding his head in your arm, even for just a second.

“Becks,” you say, and there’s sweat dripping into your eyes, you can feel his hot breath against your cheek. “Becks, listen to me. Listen to me.” You don’t dare to look at him, except you do, and it’s a small child that’s staring back at you, frightened and alone and not knowing what to do. You pull him closer, because you want him to know this before the world tells him tomorrow otherwise. “It’s not your fault. Okay? It’s not your fault.”

(You’ll watch the replays again, days and weeks and months from now, you’ll know that maybe, if he hadn’t been so stupid, you could’ve gone through and won. But you tear down the burning effigies and shout fuck you at the people in the street who tell your best mate to die, because he’s _your_ best mate, he’s _yours._ )

The ref is coming and your breathing gets harsher and fiercer. “Whatever it is,” you say, and you’re almost shouting into his ear, and he’s bent over focussing on the ball and closing his eyes and trying not to think. “Whatever happens, you’re the person I love playing with most in the world.” You slap him on the back and he walks forward to receive his fate. You know what it will be, and it is.

The camera watches him as he makes his long, wretched journey off the pitch. The world watches him. You watch him, you can do nothing but watch, your heart drumming with a thousand emotions you can’t contain, hoping that as he walks he’ll remember what you told him. Later in the dressing room, when the England players are huddled in their little groups, and Scholesy’s the only one who’s come to your corner, you tell him that again. You’re the person I love playing with most in the world.

You stay till everyone leaves, and he sobs into your shoulder, and you can do nothing but hold him. Four years later you will hold him again in celebration, but right now you can’t remember a time he’s been so small and tiny, stripped of all the cocksure confidence that has carried him so far. And this is how you say goodbye to Saint-Étienne and the World Cup and the heart of a country, the two of you. Sitting and rocking and chanting quietly the refrain: hold on, David. It’s going to be okay. Hold on.

 

_iii. Barcelona_

So this is it, the end of all things, and you know you're just being melodramatic (greater ends will come, but you don’t know it yet, and you’ll wish you had never found out); but there are no words to describe the horrible mix of anticipation and fear that settles in your throat. It makes its way down gently, almost like the way an executioner would caress his victim’s cheek, stroking at your insides with the weight of a (your) club and the (your) world.

You’re not ready. How could anyone be ready for something as momentous as this, as sweeping the third trophy to their incredible haul, as fulfilling millions of dreams of those red badged supporters? You stare out the window at the city below you, tiny and contained as if it’s the one in the small hotel room, and yet vast in all its history and the sadness it has seen. You wonder if that sadness will be added to tonight, and realise of course it will, the winners always dance and the losers always cry.

The sun outside is hovering on the horizon, its pale streaks reminding you of another shade of gold, and you push your way past towards his hotel room, rapping your knuckles on the striped wood. He opens the door a crack, sees you, smiles (at you), opens the door wider.

He’s got his daft music on again, you’re always trying to persuade him to listen to the Charlatans (one day he’ll call you and tell you he listened, though his voice will sound very far away, the Atlantic is an ocean too wide to bridge). He’s humming along to the song, bouncing on the balls of his feet, wearing a low-slung towel. You can tell he’s been at the cocoa-butter lotion again.

“You’re not scared?” you ask, perched on the foot of the bed, dragging your knees to your chest, as if hugging yourself will make everything go away.

He laughs and comes towards you, draping an arm round your shoulder. Later when you see the lineup and it’s not David playing in front of you, because he’s been put into midfield, you’ll wonder how you can play with anyone else but him in front, this golden boy who understands you, who you understand, more than anyone else. There is no one with whom you have this not-intimacy-that-is-intimacy, and maybe better players will come and go, but you will never be truly great without him.

Though now you are with him, and he leans close, and you feel the hot breath on your cheek once again. He says, “whatever happens, you’re the person I love playing with most in the world.”

Every United fan for the next hundred years will be taught about that game, will burn it into their memories and their hearts. Will sing _Oh what a night; late in May in nineteen ninety-nine, Ole scored a goal in injury time, what a feeling what a night_. You, as a United fan, will remember more than anyone else. But what you will also remember – what you know you would have remembered, regardless of the game – was the way Barcelona felt at that moment, that pinpoint time that washed over like a thunderstorm. That moment you said goodbye to everything you ever had because nothing would ever be the same without him. Because you’re sure that he knows: when you take away the football, the green pitch and the red scarves and the fifty thousand people, when you take away the ‘playing with’, all that’s left is you. You’re the person I love most in the world.

 

_iv. Madrid_

You tell yourself you always knew this would happen. It’s not helping so you try again. Silly, silly Gary. Silly, silly, silly, silly Gary, thinking he would stay.

“Oi,” he shouts, and you look around foolishly, your eyes far too accustomed to the rainy days of Manchester to adjust to the sunny beaches of Spain. “You going to help me move, or did I bring you along for nothing?”

You want be selfish, just once. You want to say, I’m not going to help you move. You want to say, I’m going to chain you the fuck down in Manchester because you’re not allowed to leave, you can’t leave me, not after all we’ve had and been through, you can’t leave, not for this god awful sun-country so bleached that it’s all white. You want to say, I’ve seen your heart and it is red and it is mine.

You pick up the box from the truck and haul it over to where he’s waiting, stood outside the doorway grinning like an idiot. He’s already looking the part, his tan and white cotton shirt and beach shorts. You packed a polo because you in beach shorts would just be daft. It is in this moment that you realise the two of you were never of the same world.

You swear under your breath when he’s out of earshot, as you’re lugging box after box of belongings into the house. One of the covers shifts a little and a hint of a sleeve peeks out, last season’s kit. You put it down, stare at it with your hands on your hips, and fetch him for an explanation. He looks at you sheepishly.

“It’s the shirt I wore for my last home game,” he says. You remember that one (of course you do), four one Charlton Athletic, he’d scored the first goal and you hadn’t played. “I wanted to give it to you.”

“Whatever for?” you say dumbly, stupidly, and his cheeks colour in like a child with a crayon.

“I dunno,” he mumbles. “Something to remember me by.”

(Later you’ll call David and tell him, you really didn’t need to give me anything to remember you by. I would have remembered in any case.)

You fly out the same day you came in, even though David invited you to attend the unveiling ceremony. It would have been far too painful to watch, even though you promise you’ll catch it on tv, tape it at least. Later in the week you’ll see him holding that new shirt and smiling that old smile, and you’ll dig your fingernails into your fists so hard that they leave marks. For now he gives you a hug and a wave and stands there until he’s out of sight, maybe wondering when he’ll see you again. You stare resolutely at the customs officer and then at your passport, wishing you could scrub away this city’s name, wishing you never had to come here again. You don’t give him a wave back. You have, after all, already given him everything.

 

_v. Manchester_

You’re giving a press conference. It’s before your testimonial game, and you’re smiling for the cameras (even when half of them probably want to rip your moustache off). You say, “I couldn’t ask for more than to have all my friends back for one last time.”

One in particular, though of course you don’t say that.

“Sod that,” he’d said when you pointed out he would miss a game with Galaxy. “You’re mental if you think I’m missing your last game.”

He looks good in the United shirt, you think as you’re stepping out onto the pitch faced with the roaring chant, _Gary Neville is a red, is a red, is a red._ You catch his eye and he winks at you as he joins the rest in clapping, to you, for you. Everything is for you today, even him.

You lose the game, but that’s not important. You pick up a scarf that’s been thrown at your feet and drape it around your neck, the way David used to drape his arm around you. And there he is again, pulling you into a hug as the cameras go, because everything he does is a news story anyhow. But you don’t mind, you’ll take what you can get.

At night you roam around Manchester with the gang, like you’re all in your twenties again, princes of the universe. You catch Scholesy giving everyone else a tactful tilt of the head, and Phil grins and says not to stay up too late as the rest of them drift off slowly. You take David back to the bridge over the canal right outside Old Trafford. The lights of MANCHESTER UNITED glow red in the darkness, calling you home.

And it does feel like you’re home again, truly and at last, just standing there and hugging him – not for the media, this time, but for yourself and no one else, for you to bury in the corner of your mind because only you can know what it means.

“I’ve missed you,” you whisper, pretending he can’t hear.

“I never left,” he replies, pretending you can’t hear.

 In the morning you know he’ll say goodbye one more time, you’ll fetch him to the airport and promise to whatsapp him (do you even know what that is? David will laugh). You’ll watch him turn the corner back to his new life, the newest in a long range just like his branded underwear. Your heart will break one more time, though you’re used to it.

You bury your face in his shoulder, never wanting to let go. Hold on, Gary. It’s going to be okay. Hold on.

You will remember the quiet breeze of that Manchester canal for years to come.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **081\. H O W**
> 
> _Or: 31 Ways to Leave Your Lover._
> 
> * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought came after listening to Paul Simon's [50 Ways to Leave your Lover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=298nld4Yfds&hl=en-GB&gl=SG), except I couldn't think of 50 ._.

**1** Swear at your gaffer, in front of the team.

 **2** Let him kick a boot at you. Make a big deal out of it with the press.

 **3** Force the move, inch by inch. Don’t tell Gary. Don’t think about Gary.

 **4** Hide the newspapers, as if Gary can’t go buy them himself. As if he couldn’t find out about things himself. As if no one in the world is talking about it – pretend, though, that you know him, how he thinks – that he’s going to be telling himself you’re not going to leave him.

 **5** Feel guilty because you know you will. 

 **6** Play your last game for Manchester United and score a goal. Acknowledge the fans. Try not to look for him in the crowd, just be glad that the gaffer didn’t play him today.

 **7** Put your arm around him during the trophy celebrations without looking him in the eye.

 **8** Take your arm away a fraction of a second faster than you would have left it before. Hope he doesn’t notice.

 **9** Text your agent on a different phone because you know he’s a busy, nosy little bastard (no, you don’t love him all the more for it).

 **10** Buy a house in Spain.

 **11** Talk to Victoria. When she says have you talked to him, say yes.

 **12** Drop by his place one night to tell him. Don’t go in. Don’t even knock on the door.

 **13** Drop by again the next day. And the next. Just waiting, skulking around, then leaving. Maybe, you think, it’s practice.

 **14** Muster up the courage one day and ring the doorbell. Be invited inside. Cook dinner as an apology.

 **15** When he, being him, says are you going, say I don’t know. Tell yourself not to look at his face.

 **16** Look at his face anyway. Nothing’s changed; still the stupid haircut you keep telling him you know a guy to see about, still the burning brown eyes. That stupid moustache. The wrinkle on his brow. Look at his hands, remember how they felt, remember how he always lifts two fingers up when he’s making a point, has done so since you were both twelve, remember that you’ve known each other since you were twelve.

 **17** Realise that he hasn’t changed, you have.

 **18** Go home. Pick up alcohol on the way. Drink and rationalise and allow yourself to have second thoughts. Think of everything you will lose, think of everything you could continue to have. Think of him, fast asleep by now – it’s only sodding ten – think of the empty space beside him. Think of how empty everything would be.

 **19** Almost dial your agent and tell Real Madrid to fuck off, because Gary is my home. Gary is my home.

 **20** Don’t.

 **21** Tell him the day before it’s going to come out in the papers.

 **22** Tell him at Old Trafford and realise only once you’ve said it that it was a mistake, that it reeks of betrayal, confessing your love for another in the house of your first. And so push him away even more.

 **23** Don’t go after him when he stands up and leaves without saying another word. Just sit there, in your theatre of dreams, the red plastic seats and the green grass. The words ‘stretford end’ stamped into the top of the stand.

 **24** Consider asking him to come with you then laughing it away, as if Gary Neville would ever leave United. Even for you.

 **25** Pack up your wooden spoons.

 **26** Drive to the airport alone, not that you expected him to offer you a ride.

 **27** Look at the words on your plane ticket and allow the realisation to hit you like a shotgun bullet into your gut, wrenching your heart from your sleeve, knowing you might never play there again, knowing he might never wrap his arm around you again and tell you everything will be fine. Nothing can be fine, not now.

 **28** Don’t squint into the blinding paparazzi cameras that are tracking your every move in hopes of finding that familiar mop of dark hair, those burning brown eyes becoming soft and kind and beautiful when they see you, don’t search for something you know you will never find.

 **29** Don’t react when you see him all the way back, near the doors, don’t smile or even nod or even acknowledge his existence, because if you do you will have to acknowledge the slight drop in his shoulder, you will have to hear the breaking of a heart.

 **30** Don’t look back.

 **31** Don’t say goodbye.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **002\. M I D D L E S**
> 
> _Or: When the Sun Blinks Through Your Curtains.  
>  Gary likes to think about things differently._
> 
> * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's pretty short, this one, but I just got to thinking about all the little bits in the middle. The infamous wooden spoons video makes a reference, and Becks did give an interview once about how he couldn't watch United for two years. The rest is all my imagnashun.

It’s the little things people forget.

 

People like to remember big moments. That’s what they do; that’s how memory works. So everyone remembers David Beckham’s wonder goal from the halfway line against Wimbledon. Everyone remembers his sending off against Argentina in ’98. The magical goal that brought them equal against Tottenham on the last day of the 1999 Premier League. The free kick against Greece to send them into the World Cup. And, of course, the boot-butterfly-sticker-sunny-Spain saga of those long summer months.

That’s not how Gary Neville would like to remember David Beckham. Their story, he reckons, is like any other story: there is the sharp beginning, the falling in love, the heightened drama, the sizzling climax, the broken end. And of course he remembers the start. He can tell you all about how he thought the boy from London was nothing more than that, a flash Cockney git who thought himself too stylish. He can tell you how he softened when he watched Becks take a free kick for the first time, the ball soaring into the net (and something else singing in his heart, too). He can tell you about the first time they had lunch together, or the first time they held hands, or any other milestone that would’ve been a requisite chapter heading in a chick lit novel.

Or he can tell you all about the end. How rumours had been swirling around all season, and how he always knew, anyway, that Becks’s ambition was to play overseas. Away from Manchester, away from him, and it really shouldn’t ever have been a surprise. He can tell you in intricate detail how each mention of Spain meant digging his fingers into his palms a little bit more. He can talk about the moment he saw Becks walk onto the pitch for the first time in a white shirt, not red, not his, and how when Becks gives an interview a long time later about how he couldn’t watch Man United for two years, he thought to himself he couldn’t watch Real Madrid for far longer than that.

But these are points. These are spikes in the narrative graph that climbs steadily upwards, and it is the spikes that people think string a story together. It’s not. It’s the middle bit; where writers always get stuck because they have the start and the end and don’t know how to get there, so they fill it with fluff and nonsense. But the two of them – they always knew how to get there. That’s the stuff never to forget. And maybe it’s the spikes that make a book worth reading, but the middle bit is what makes his life worth living.

It’s lying in bed at away games, Becks watching the telly and Gary reading a book, head resting heavily on Becks’s chest, trying not to be distracted by the _thump_ of the heartbeat through the thin cotton shirt. It’s Gary leaning over Becks’s shoulder watching him stir-fry onions with his stupid new wooden spoon that Gary had to go and buy after he was found severely lacking (and bought seventy nine of them, just to be annoying about it).  It’s dancing in the rain when everyone’s gone back in to towel off and go home, just them in this twenty-three-man-wide field, bright liquid beads soaking into their clothes and skin, twisting around ball at their feet back and forth, hands on shoulders, hands on hearts.   

Gary doesn’t really care that Becks left (tells himself that, anyway). Because that, those moments are easy, and since when has he ever done anything easy? So he gathers the shattered, broken pieces on the ground, forgotten and left behind. The building blocks. The songs on the guitar and the pasty runs at midnight and Becks fussing around tying Gary’s tie because he either doesn’t know or can’t be bothered to do it. The in-betweens, the looking up and seeing ‘7’ in front of him every week every day, the soft, tender moments of silence where they listen to each other breathe. The asides, the breakfast rituals (pulp in Gary’s, no pulp in Becks’s), the way they lace their shoes up, the smell of Becks after a shower, brief and ginger and citrusy.

 

It’s the little things people forget.

 

It’s the little things he remembers.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **096\. L O S S**
> 
> _Some things you don't get over._
> 
> * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK so this is so melodramatic and awful - I wrote it for a competition on another site (second place LMAO magic) and the prompt was to write a story that focuses entirely on one emotion - the emotion evidently that I chose was 'loss', and as a result everything is very very smacks-you-in-the-face and I don't really like it :\\\ but since it's Beville I thought I'd just post it lolol. 
> 
> I also wrote this on a rainy day in Manchester when I was standing at the front gates waiting for Becks (it was so stupid bc it was rAINING so like idk why I thought they would still stop ???? so ofc they just all went in immediately and I was soaked for nothing) so none of this makes sense (I haven't read it again) (i'm a bad writer) sorryyyy >>
> 
> Finally and this is totally irrelevant have a picture of [smol Becks](https://40.media.tumblr.com/9c747019c4611aed155ab5debf52fdc4/tumblr_nykuw8maid1rquh4lo1_540.jpg) because isn't he adorable??????/

You say, this is some funny stuff, this. Six word stories based on Hemingway. Look, here's a good one: _I'm beside myself; cloning machine works._

He looks up from scrambling the eggs, smiles, you trace the curve at the edge of his mouth you know only appears when he's happy. Nicely done, he says, dipping the eggs onto plates and coming to look over your shoulder. It's been nine years and you still shiver when his breath lightly tickles your neck. _365 apples - my annual insurance policy_ , you read another one, emboldened by his presence. He smiles again, covers your hand in his, scrolls and stops. You see what he's landed on. _I still make coffee for two._

You look up at his face, creasing slightly, like the folds of a pair of well-worn trousers, or a sheet of origami gently crumpled, floating farther away with each glance. You're not sure what you're looking for.

Then he laughs and slings an arm around you, ruffling your hair like he always does. I make coffee for two, too. When are you going to pull your own weight?

It's a nespresso machine, you protest, letting go of the mouse to cover his hand in yours.

***

You look at a lot of old pictures, you can't really help it. That's what people do, don't they, keep the things they break. Keep the things that break them. France, '98, him cavorting around the hotel lobby, daft as a duck. London two years later, his arm around you, as it always is, the grin on his face so big you think he might burst. That shining night in Barcelona, the two of you glimmering with the world at your feet. Turkey '94. His golden hair, still floppy and falling into his eyes, his cheeks still rosy with innocence as he stretches a hand towards the camera (you).

Only when you look away from his faded eyes do you realise your hand is on the photograph, stretching towards his, your fingers tentacles reaching out for what they do not know. And he a museum, still and splendid in his unmoving grace, only to look at, never to touch.

***

What are you thinking of? He says, lazily tracing circles in your hair.

Nothing, you say absently, then, you.

I like the way you think. He rolls upright and rests his head in his hands, looking at you like an angel. What about me, exactly?

How long this will last.

He stops smiling. Rolls back over to stare at the ceiling instead, avoiding your gaze. You know what he's going to say - forever - you know why he won't say it - forever is a very long time. That's the difference between you and him.

You won't lose me, you say.

I know, he says.

***

You wake up. The clock flashes 1 AM, red light searing into your eyes, a dull, hollow ache in your chest. You're scrunched over on the right side again, force of habit. And a double bed's a bit useless, isn't it, when you stretch your arm to the other side, and there's no one there.

***

It was always going to happen. You've seen it in his eyes, what he wants (not you) and what he will give up to get it (you). You've won everything there was to win; you suppose you had to lose sometime. So you practice it a thousand times in the mirror. Tell yourself every night, whispering the words to yourself as you watch him sleep. Look up the phrase on google: 'letting go'.

You can practice for the next thousand years and nothing will ever be the cold spring morning he looks up from the eggs, the crease in his face deeper than usual. He puts down the pan, exhales, you can see the rise and fall of his chest outlined against the sunlight. Purses his lips, turns to look at you. Blue on brown, brown on blue. Says, I'm going to Spain. Says, they've offered me something I couldn't refuse. Says, it's really nice weather over there.

Doesn't say, I'm sorry. Doesn't say, goodbye.

***

Trying to forget is not easy. The moment you close your eyes, he's all you see, almost like you never lost; in your dreams you wrap your fingers around his name. I won't leave you, he'd said, and he was right. He is in the scrambled eggs, the cologne that lingers in the bottle you haven't yet thrown away, the glimmers of blonde Christmas ribbon you mistake. The spaces of the everyday.

You won't lose me, you'd said. In moments of clarity you remember your primary school science class, the teacher with her pristine blackboard, scrawling words and diagrams in thick white chalk while you doodled footballs and cricket bats on your homework. Arteries and veins. You always knew hearts were supposed to have holes in them.

***

The first time you meet, you want to shake him off. This daft East Ender who thinks everything's funny, even Phil's dad jokes, and those are never funny. He follows you and the lads around like a helpless puppy, trying to squeeze in, and you're doing all you can not to tell him to get lost, because for some strange reason the other lads seem to like him. He smiles too much, you think sourly, kicking the ball against the wall for the eighth thousandth time. Takes it too lightly. You need to be serious in life, don't you, to get what you want.

Can I join? He says, coming up next to you with a ball of his own. You give him a side-eye that would kill a horse and move five steps away, intent on blocking him out. He'll leave soon enough. No one stays as long as you.

He stays. Today and every day. You start to like him staying, even though you won't admit it, and he won't expect you to. You shift four steps away one week, then three steps the next. You wonder if he's counting, you know he is.

The night you're close enough to hold his hand, you look up at him, properly, see a face that isn't laughing for the first time. Trace the fine strands of silken blonde hair, dripping with sweat, the sharp contours of his cheeks, the crease that appears in the middle of his forehead when he's concentrating, mouth curled in a half-frown. He looks up at you, blue on brown, brown on blue.

I won't leave you, he says.

Suddenly you realise that he is serious in life, he is, to get what he wants. His hand hangs in the air. You hesitate for a moment, don't move. Allow your skin to brush his on its own accord, dangling in the wind like paper streamers. Stand there. Stay there. Watch the rise and fall of his chest, like the gentle foam crests of waves lapping at the shore. Turn your hand ever so slightly, to cover his in yours. Don't say, I'm sorry. Don't say, goodbye.

***

You still make coffee for two.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **076\. F I X E D**
> 
> _Gary gets clattered. Becks tries to help._
> 
> * * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD HAPPY BEVILLE???????  
> I was watching Raiders of the Lost Ark the other day and my favourite scene is the ['where doesn't it hurt'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1Mol2c-pxI) scene and I was like ok but beville in that situation tho (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
> 
> Basically me having fun with Beville which I never do bc they're so ridiculously broken but yey for remembering times when they weren't broken! Basically me indulging in hysterical!gaz in the first bit (because he can be so funny it's just he's usually too busy being sad to be funny). Basically me steadfastly ignoring Valencia. Basically me satisfying my need for seeing gaz bruised and battered and half shirtless imeanwhat
> 
> Also basically me apologising because the next beville fic im working on is...angsty

Everything happens at once. He’s flying down the right wing, teeing up Ole for his second goal, and then he’s on the ground, a million billion people staring down at him – or is he staring up at them? – with Looks on their faces. There’s a ringing in his ears, almost as annoying as Philip babbling about the brilliant step-over he did two years ago that no one saw, and it bounces around his brain like a bullet ricocheting off a steel tunnel. Cold, wet grass slicks into the back of his shirt, his pants (not entirely uncomfortable, he muses), the length of his socks. Something rusty iron cloys the air, clinging to each raindrop that leaks down his face.

He giggles.

“Is he _laughing_?” someone says, Philip probably, since he looks like a bundle of nerves. Technically, he _is_ a bundle of nerves. Ha ha. Gary tilts his hand into the air and squints hard at his fingertips, which are covered in blood.

Certainly puts a new spin on ‘Gary Neville is a red’. He giggles harder.

“God, he’s really fucked, isn’t he,” someone else says, Scholesy probably, because the dumb bastard sounds like he’s enjoying it.

“Gaz, mate.” Becks definitely, because he’d know that voice anywhere, even in the hazy plains between states of consciousness (not because he loves it, though he does, but because it’s so goddamn _squeaky_ ).

“Cockney helium,” he mutters.

Becks doesn’t hear, and Gary can feel the pounding of the med team’s feet drumming into the grass as they run towards him. Everything happens at once – fingers on his wrist, hands on his head, fluffy cotton pads to stop the bleeding. He’s lifted into the air clean-and-jerk, the medics like Olympic bodybuilders, and for a moment he floats around like a balloon (a balloon filled with Cockney helium, he thinks, cackling so hard he might crack another rib).

“Don’t die,” says Phil, looking like he might shatter into a thousand pieces each inscribed with the words ‘oh my god’ at any moment.

“Can I have your guitar?” says Scholesy, who knows full well he plays a guitar like a chicken dives for pearls, and probably just wants to send it to Gallagher again to piss ghost-Gary off.

“I’ll see you later, it's going to be okay,” says Becks. And that’s the thread Gary hangs on to as he slips in and out of the world, smacking staples and needles away with a silly, dreamy grin on his face. He doesn’t need that. He’s seeing Becks later. Everything’s going to be okay.

 

* * *

 

Everything’s  _not_ going to be okay, fuck Becks (well, he has) and his pretty promises. Gary groans as he struggles into a sitting position, kneading his palms into the soft foam of the bed. The ‘-induced happiness’ part of the pain-induced happiness he’d felt is gone, replaced by a very real stinging sensation down the side of his ribs. There’s a squishy feeling in his right eye that he’s quite sure isn’t supposed to be there, and he can’t feel four of his fingers, which is just as well because at that moment Becks turns up and it’s difficult to strangle someone when you’ve not got a hand.

“In what part of your dubious little world is this okay?” he grumbles, staring as accusingly as he can (squidgy right eye does not angry make) at his tormentor. “Keown absolutely clattered me, Becks. I can’t feel my fingers, I can’t half see, I don’t know what’s happened to my collarbone, I’ll be out for fucking weeks.”

“Oh, man up, Neville,” Becks says with that stupid twinkle in his eye Gaz wishes right now he could throw into the bin (or keep it in his pocket so he could smile even if its owner wasn’t around – must be the morphine talking, shut up Gary). “It’s only a scratch.”

Gary wants his ensuing expression of incredulousness to be framed for posterity. “Only a scratch?” he howls, pulling up his shirt to reveal the extent of the damage – sticky, bloody bandages plastering the pasty white skin. “This is not ‘only a scratch’, my dear sir, this is Serious Business with capital letters and there is no way of kissing it to make it better.”

Becks is leaning over Gary’s bed, staring at the bandages with such an intensity that Gary blushes and makes to pull his shirt down. The blonde bastard, however, grabs his arm and pushes it all the way back up. “How sure are you about that?” he murmurs, raising his eyes to meet Gary’s even as he lowers his lips to brush them softly against a patch of unbroken skin.

“Uh, no.” Gary is way too pissed off at his ribs and Keown and Scholesy who’s probably stealing his guitar right now and the world to fall for this shit again. Even though he may or may not have shuddered, the crook of his back arcing towards the touch. May or may not. “See the sign on the wall? ‘Do not disturb’?  That applies even to international superstars, you know.”

There’s that stupid grin again and Becks reaches one hand out to take Gary’s fingers. Slowly he runs his thumb over Gary’s knuckles, warm and gentle and about as innocent as the entire Liverpool dressing room (no wonder they’re so fucked, and he thinks that’s a brilliant pun). Gary breathes in, trying to conceal the sharpness of it, but Becks lifts a perfectly-manicured eyebrow.

“Got some feeling back already?” he asks.

“Hm,” says Gary, conscientiously training his gaze on the whitewashed walls. “Maybe.”

There’s a rustle and Becks leans forward, half-tilting on his toes, to kiss Gary’s collarbone gently. Gary’s newly restored fingers clench and unclench, and he’s watched _Raiders_ too many damn times not to know what’s coming next.

“I do not need a nurse,” he complains as Becks plants one hand on his pillow to stabilize himself, the other hand resting against his chest (where the fuck did his shirt go? What the fuck, Becks?). He especially doesn’t need a nurse who doesn’t understand the concept of personal space, and he especially doesn’t need a nurse to kiss his squidgy eye in such a way that makes his heart stop beating. That defeats the point of nursing entirely.

“What you need, Gary Neville,” Becks whispers, locking their eyes together in a first-to-blink-loses game (Gary never loses games), “is to shut up.”

His lips are warm and soft and inviting, and Gary figures he likes Becks’s definition of okay more than he likes his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line about the Liverpool dressing room was for [Anemoi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi) hehe! (but srs Liverpool is like a major port the shipping amounts are incredible)


End file.
